The Associated Press - 25 Sep 1995

"I'm not sure what they're afraid of," said artist Mary Fisher, who held the 1992 Republican convention spellbound with a speech about being a mother with the AIDS virus. "I don't consider my art controversial, nor do I consider myself a controversial person."

Three senators had invited Fisher to mount her 26-piece exhibit, called "Messages," in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. But subsequent objections to the coffin, and Fisher's refusal to remove it from the show, led Sen. John Warner, R-Va., to rescind the invitation Friday.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., one of the three original sponsors, helped Fisher find space at the foot of the Capitol at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America headquarters.

Fisher's collages and sculpture are exhibited in a fifth-floor room draped with white sheets and crawling with media attracted by the furor. "A capital conundrum over AIDS, art and appropriateness!" declared a fired-up TV reporter doing a stand-up next to the notorious casket.

Fisher, 47, contracted the AIDS virus from her husband, who died in 1993. She wandered among her artwork Monday, a small blonde woman in black, a red commemorative AIDS ribbon pinned to her shoulder.

Many of her pieces are collage panels featuring headlines about AIDS, excerpts from her speeches, and photographs of her two sons, aged 7 and 5.

Some of her sculptures are wooden pulpits covered with words, paintings and photographs. One features a continuously playing tape recording of "To Worship in the Ashes," a sermon she gave two years ago. Another, in gilt and faux marble, announces that "I'll Not Go Quietly."

The casket is the most dramatic piece, painted with dark stars and laden with a huge paper-sculpted bouquet. Fisher has gilded the border below the lid and written, "Let us unite in life rather than death, believing that AIDS is our enemy. Life is measured by its depth, not by its length."

The other two sponsors of Fisher's art exhibit were Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Neither was aware that the show contained an actual casket. Kassebaum, a close friend of Fisher, urged her to withdraw the piece.

"I'm saddened by their reactions, but I don't feel that they don't support me," Fisher said of the two Republicans. She said no senator came to view the work in context but she hoped some would come to the exhibit this week.

Fisher has been steeped in art and politics all her life. Her father, Max, a Michigan industrialist and premier GOP fund-raiser, is honorary finance chairman of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's presidential campaign.

Three years ago, in the midst of a GOP convention roundly criticized for being strident and alienating, Fisher brought the hall to silence with a poignant call for compassion. She has since founded the Family AIDS Network and written three books, including a memoir called "My Name is Mary," due in January.

Fisher's exhibit was proceeding along a routine path until several media outlets noted that it contained an actual casket and The Washington Times branded it "a bizarre display." Alarms went off among some at the Senate Rules Committee.

Changes in the Senate leadership forced Fisher to plead her case in a Sept. 11 letter to committee chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska and then again a week later to Warner, his successor.

In her letter to Stevens, Fisher called her exhibit "one soul's cry." She said she took on pain, loss and death "as boldly and as sensitively as I knew how." In both letters, Fisher rejected the view that her work was political or partisan.

Warner replied that the committee was rescinding its invitation based on research that showed "the display of actual caskets or casket-like objects in the Capitol Building and related Senate office buildings has been restricted to official state funerals and memorial services."

A memo from the Senate curator additionally notes that "no casket or graphic depictions of death appeared" in 1989 exhibits about Holocaust victims and prisoners of war.

The exhibit runs through Friday.

Copyright 1995/The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.

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